After The Fall: A Super Mario AU Fanfiction
by Coastal Recounts
Summary: Ms. Senna Figueiredo is a Brazilian-born Architect living on Earth (San Francisco), and after a run-in with a warp pipe in a dilapidated building, she finds the once-mighty Antarctic fortress (Mario is Missing), covered in garbage. Who is responsible? Will she make it out alive? (Highly Literate w/ mix of both Canon/Fan Characters in a Multi-Mario Universe. Many chapters to come!)
1. Chapter 1

_"I was falling. Falling through time and space and stars and sky and everything in between. I fell for days and weeks and what felt like lifetime across lifetimes. I fell until I forgot I was falling." _

_― Jess Rothenberg, The Catastrophic History of You and Me_

-Chapter 1-

**A**nother nine-hour day of work was complete, and the woman who finally saw its end was never gladder to trudge up her last flight of stairs and clumsily finger the deep scratches that decorated an otherwise ordinary, brass doorknob. The keys that latched onto her empty belt loop chimed in a pitch with the wailing landline that had grown stale long before she could fit the keys in the keyhole—she groaned a realization that she'd forgotten to turn on the straight-to-voicemail feature again. With a reluctant urgency, she hurried through twists and turns to her kitchen to grab the corded receiver on the wall, but the answering machine refused to grant her that fraction of a second and started off in its 44Mhz monotone:

_Hello, you have reached Senna Figueiredo of M&T Construction. I'm sorry that I can't get to the phone right now, but if you lea—_

"Hello? Hello!?"

She placed the receiver back on its hook to press star and 69 to call back, but she was not offered the luxury and simply picked up instead.

"Hello? Senna speaking!"

It was her—Senna's—mother. Like clockwork, it was all part of their weekly routine. Since her daughter could never officially guess which weekday night it would fall on, she informed her friends, in jest, that, from 6 to 7PM, she had 'homework' to do, and her mother was unafraid to let her know if she'd almost failed. The young woman placed the receiver on the table and pressed the speaker button.

"Neni! Why don't you get a cell phone? I've called you three times now." the doting mother groused in an entrenched, Carioca accent.

"I was at work, ma. I literally just got home when you called!"

"If you had a cell phone, you could tell me when you are getting home!"

"Mama,…" Senna's vowels trailed off flatly as she reached into her freezer for a small carton of vanilla ice cream. "...c'mon. You know I'll call you back if I miss you. I always do."

"Good, I need to hear you miss me. I never hear from you anymore! At least your job is going so well."

"We talk every week! Ahh, but yeah—it's been keeping me pretty busy."

"You know your father's been busy. He is celebrating his 30th year at Bernland's in November. With stocks as they are and the court settlement, he's thinking about retiring."

"Oh, really?" she blubbered in between paces and mouthfuls of frozen milk.

"You need to take care of yourself, Senna!" The mother piped up suddenly. "You're up there all alone with nobody and I told you so many times downtown San Francisco is not the best!"

Senna sighed with a weighty patience. "Ma, look, this place is close to my location, and… I like it; I have never had a _real_ problem here. If this is about wanting to see me, then I'll come visit soon, okay?"

"Soon, soon—brincadeira! Your father and I are going to see your cousin's new baby girl next week in Chicago and we're staying until Sunday."

Senna leaned her back against the counter; her dessert was quickly morphing into a beverage. "Oh... Wait, you're leaving for Chicago?"

"Yes, yes, I told you before! I told you, right? I told Risa, I told—" The woman trailed off abruptly and in such a way that boasted of how well she absolutely could. "Ohh, Neni, your grandmother! I got to go tell her—"

"But wait! I wanna know now!"

"I will talk to you soon! You take care of yourself!"

Senna hummed her goodbye with a good-humored eye-roll. She parted with her paper waste and hopped onto her couch to flip through the local 100 channels trapped within her square hulk of a television. Everything in her 301 E. Walter St. apartment was a bit dated, and the 27 year-old woman had long since nurtured a contemporarily modest upbringing as a fine excuse to keep those technological relics-some even older than her-fully functional. She agreeably changed when her employers demanded the newest and best software for the job, but if each didn't, he was made aware that Senna pinched her pennies and made quick work of her disadvantages in two, concisely jocular languages—at least one being a resourceful markup in her scripted disposition: 'Make new of what you already have.'

And yet, the young woman wasn't completely resourceful; she was often curious with money and dared to venture into abstraction for innovation's sake just to end up with more dimes and quarters to spin on top of her desk. She valued her brand as a by-product of success, and she strived to meet the complete satisfaction of her clients and herself in what was, for her, the brand new world of Architecture. She guided herself through to the eye of the storm careening to the rhythm of efficiency, and she could disassemble the drumbeat long before she could describe what it sounded like.

Senna turned over on the couch, which she was lazily slouched over, and pressed 'Off' on her remote for the TV and VCR combo. No less fatigued, she sat up and quickly decided that she'd either spend the rest of her night shooting drinks with a good Ska jam or continue work on a client's project proposal; together, the allure was born of cause-and-effect. It wasn't long before she was swaying in front of her mirror and crooning to the image of a woman with a mid-tone complexion and a black, side-swept pompadour fixed with blonde streaks. She set her shot glass down on the table for a moment and leaned forward to see her reflection in her jet-black eyes, then wiped a smear of ice cream away from the corner of her rosy smile. When she realized that her stomach was bloated from all of the sweets, she laughed—the imagined look on her mother's face was an attraction well worth the admission.

"Soon, soon—brincadeira! Get back here now and I'll find you a good man before you ruin everything you got!"

* * *

**S**enna's specific title was an Architectural Technologist, and the professional performance record she'd completed in the last year made her thoroughly unable to forget it. Since then, the majority of her experience was merely theoretical, and she fit right in a salaried position along with two other apprentices and a few of her more experienced surveyors. The M&T structure where she worked was composed of about eight on-hands, supervised by both the senior Design Architect and Construction Engineer and followed by the general head of projects—the well-aged M. T. himself, who was also his very own, professionally casual construction manager. Those professionally casual days that followed for Senna began at 8:50AM to prepare herself for the surprise workload of her inbox at her desk, and the time only soared if the work wasn't clerical. It was now Thursday afternoon, and those first four hours weren't an exception to the former. However, she was eager to complete any and all documentation leading up to the imminent approval of her third, on-site design project: 1709 Mushroom Circle. With a good back stretch, she slipped the stack of paper into a bright, manila envelope and informed her design supervisor that she didn't want to see it again until after lunch.

Senna often ate at Maria's Best, a peaceful café which was conveniently located right around the corner from her lot, and she voluntarily spent her lunch-breaks in the company of some associates from a neighboring Independent Contractor agency that M&T inevitably enjoyed affiliating with. She and a group of three construction workers—today, two guys and a girl—delighted in each others' company, and the open, even-paced conversation between them was always a breath of fresh air. Mike, a brunette of about twenty, one who often enjoyed a plate of fiery-stuffed enchiladas smothered in nacho sauce, started a conversation about a bizarre occurrence to accompany the blissful chewing sounds among them.

"…One time, my girlfriend told me about a weird, raspy breathing that she heard when she used to stay at her grandparents' house in Maine. She went downstairs a couple of times in the night to see if it was them, and they were completely passed out. She never felt right in that house. The grandparents denied ever hearing anything."

A woman named Alana, approaching her latest thirties, chimed after. "Maine is such a beautiful place, but I don't doubt that it's haunted—not one bit—especially near the coast. It's like Seattle; it's cold and gloomy almost year round."

Senna interjected with a small mouthful. "I know this is a little off from the subject; it's kind of related…" she paused mid-sentence in her neutral accent and cleared her palate. "…But when I was a little girl, I remember my mother telling me about these huge, yellow turtles when we lived in Rio. I was too young to remember and we came to the states shortly after, but my mother witnessed one break into a museum and make off with an artifact. She said it was pretty fast, and it jumped down this large sewer pipe before she could even get to a phone."

The last worker laughed with the food in his mouth, and Mike smiled and did wise. "You believe everything your mother tells you like that, Senna?"

"Not really. She _is_ pretty dramatic—about everything. But, what gets me is that she's not a liar. She doesn't even lie to kids; not about death, sex… It's embarrassing, actually."

Robert, food still in his mouth, was the last to speak. "That's a little too crazy for anyone to _not_ make up."

"Yeah, probably." Senna admitted. "I just remembered it now from all of these years."

"Mothers don't think of it as lying as much as it is entertaining their children. It is very entertaining, though." Alana reassured. "You could write a story about it."

Hours after her lunch break, Senna jolted back into a state of awareness. The disbelief of the silly story had preyed on her mind since, and she found herself rather irked that it had. Fortunately for her, she was glad that she'd developed a firm reputation of deceivingly aimless studiousness, even in the short time she was employed. She was pleased to be enthusiastically interrupted by the senior Construction Engineer and to follow her fellow colleagues into the backroom for a briefing. Too, the project manager was present, and Senna swore that it was the first time that she had seen him all week. With a cleared mind, she sat with her arms folded in her lap and bounced her knees in anticipation of the health of her artistic proposal. The tall manager rolled up his sleeves and began to speak with a satisfied frankness.

"Thank you, everyone, for doing your part this last week. We've done our reports and turned in our proposals on time. Along with our senior Architect, Margaret, I just interviewed the client with his Contractor, and we've finished the paperwork, and received payment. So, we're clear to start auditing the site tomorrow!" There was a unanimous roar of cheer and applauds from within the small room. "The client won't be on-site until Monday, although his Contractors will meet us at 9AM on-site. Margaret looked over Senna's proposal—pretty good— and the client will offer us further feedback in a couple of days. The Engineers—Doug, you should have the files in your email tomorrow morning for review."

He paused, and Senna stole a satiated sigh before he began again. "As you all know, we've settled on the demolition of the current structure, so the machines will be on-site once we thoroughly inspect the site. To my apprentices: please keep in mind the National Electric Code and the ANSI if you need to dig anything out; it's an old building, but those wires are still active. As always, I will be on-site tomorrow. If you have any questions—"

The elements of the room began to scatter and a voice in the escalating crowd made itself audible. "It's been government owned for 5 years prior to purchase, and it's right next to the underground sewer system. There's probably no work done on it in those five years; is it possible that a leak in the plumbing could induce corrosives with the wires?"

"There's a better chance that the plumbing itself is much more corrosive."

Senna shook her head and left on the note. She had suddenly become too hungry for turtle soup to let other broths spoil the cook.

* * *

**I**t was a bright, Friday morning at 1709 Mushroom Circle, and the M&T crew met up with their client's contractor bright and early in a minor parking dilemma. With so many vehicles parked in parallel and only leaving room for the clearance of driveways, Senna resorted to parking her sedan across the L-curve down the street. The walk wasn't far, and it still allowed her to slowly ease the realization of the decrepit structure onto her instead of suddenly and aggressively. She supposed to herself that it used to be a small clinic or a private nursing home. Whatever it was, it was in the worst condition that she'd ever seen a two-story building in. Its wood paneling was so old between the gutters and roof that it had long excreted gelatinous ooze, and she could almost imagine the inside decorated like a solutional cave. When she arrived next to the General Contractor, she remarked "How's this for a Carpenter's amusement park?" He shook his head in some sort of agreement. When they were all gathered there, Dr. M. T. made his face in front of the neighboring crews and started his morning announcement.

"Well, here it is; the lovely 1709 Mushroom Circle. Again, we are in synchronized agreement to demolish this structure after we do a manual audit of the land in a full report. But before that, we must identify and disengage potential hazards before beginning the audit. Let's get to it!"

He clapped his hands, and his audience of six slipped on their protective equipment and entered the building in single file. As dark as it should have been without the supply of power from overhead, all of the holes in the roof's placement almost made the interior look bright. The head of the bright yellow brigade was a General Contractor named Tom who led in place of the Doctor, who did his audits from the safety of outdoors. Tom lifted leg after leg over scattered and abandoned furniture until he found an area that looked plausibly like a basement.

"Guys, our highest priority is to find the circuit breaker and switch off. Then, we can inspect the wiring." He held up two fingers to lead a subgroup made of himself and another further down into the unstable structure, and just moments passed before a string of numerous, flickering bulbs flashed and finally exhausted.

"All clear."

Upon his return, the group split down the middle. Senna decided to follow Tom, who was also followed by a very young and timid intern—a to-be Engineer. They navigated through slanted archways and doorless side-rooms, briefly assessing each one. With thick, but weakened walls and a dark-grey dust that blanketed the scattered debris, each room they visited followed the dump's uniform decay until they discovered a half-bathroom cramped in the corner inside of what seemed to be a room once used for custodial care. What Senna found strange about this room was a horrible smell that seemed to emit from one of the best preserved facilities in the house yet. Its toilet, sink and shower barely looked as if they'd been used at all. It was only littered in the drywall that had fallen from overhead; and still, the smell lingered. Tom and Senna engaged in a short discussion about it, and he led.

"What a smell! It has to be from the sewer system. There's a leak below."

"But if that were true, the whole house would have that uniform smell. It's just this room."

"Not necessarily. It's likely that it's just backed up on this side and the leak is only beneath this area."

"Yeah, but—somehow…" She narrowed her eyes in sleuth. "…it doesn't smell like your normal sewage."

"The house is years old. I'll be surprised if the septic tank has been pumped in a decade or more."

The trio began more thoroughly investigating the plumbing. Tom and the intern, who was Jacob, checked the sink and toilet while Senna stood in the tub and squatted to take a better look at the small, grated drain. She only knew the very basics of plumbing, but when she tapped at the tub's broken spout, even she was surprised to have not smelled anything more unusual than the mildew that constantly permeated through the house. And yet, the abominable smell was still somewhere. Senna eased herself back to a standing position by putting her hand onto the tub's tile wall when she felt the structure rattle. Senna turned to Jacob, who turned to Tom, and their triad of suspicion was formed.

Tom smacked his hand against the tile, and it rattled more violently. It was a surprisingly thin wall, and it was likely that there was little-to-nothing, if not anything at all, supporting it from behind. By now, each was excited about the discovery, and the three took nearby blunt objects and began to attack the tile wall mercilessly. Whether it was one of the building's oldest secrets or just bad craftsmanship would be something they'd uncover with just a few more blows to the surface, and when that time came, the secret therein delivered the last blow unto them.

What lay beyond the tile was a small room that was no larger than an oblong closet and a rather large, bright yellow pipe that was covered in slime and sluggish, plump vermin. The same slime covered most of the floor behind the tub, and the smell was one just less atrocious than the stench of death. Jacob and Senna stared at the sight, mesmerized. "Now **this** is interesting!" Tom exclaimed as he tore down the tile a little more to accommodate for two more onlookers.

Senna immediately revisited the story she'd told her lunch-mates just the day before. The pipe before her looked almost big enough to allow her to slide down—not that she'd entertain the daring feat a moment too soon. She watched with an evolving expression as Tom tried to put a foot through the hole in the tiles, but for him, the crevice was still too high and he was also not interested to dive face-first into a pile of damp slime.

"I was just telling a story the other day to some Carpenters that my mom once told me about giant turtles that went down pipes like these." Senna looked and sounded like she was a bit disoriented—perhaps from the smell. She turned to the young boy, Jacob, who offered her no words, just a blank and confused stare in return. "…damnit, maybe these are the pipes that they went down!"

Tom grabbed her shoulder with an even more confused look on his face than Jacob's. "Miss, these are sewer pipes, remember? Remember we were talking about the one that broke below the surface? Some idiot—" Tom suddenly stopped to laugh at the situation as a whole before continuing. "—some IDIOT must've forgot which way to put the pipe and tried to cover it up! In a bath… I-I-in a bathroom!" The Contractor stopped to laugh even harder. He removed his goggles, and a tear began to stream down his reddened face. "The people must—HAHA—the people must've thought that their toilet had a permanent shit-smell!"

Tom's laugh was so distinct that Jacob cracked up at his laughter alone. Even Senna smiled a little, but she couldn't tear her eyes away from the small hint of the pipe's alluring chrome shine that sparkled from underneath the filth.

"And she—ooh, boy—and she thinks it's turtles!" He couldn't help himself. Tom laughed so hard that he sounded like he was regurgitating his stomach. "Who built this house? A Russian?! It's the only bathroom that shits on you back!"

Jacob was sitting on the floor and holding his head to sustain his vocal amusement, and Senna sat at the edge of the tub only to realize that it had come loose, too. Finally, she broke down completely and she slapped her knees and began to laugh with the duo. She embraced Tom in a fit of their hilarity, and then, everything about the house became a joke to them. The three laughed themselves happily throughout an effortless day.

* * *

**N**ighttime had come more quickly that night than it had for every day in that entire week, and Senna felt as if she was still a day behind. It was almost midnight, and she had been sprawled over her couch like a rag-doll for hours, mulling over her thoughts since the conversation she had had at lunch yesterday—all as if they were a figment of her imagination. Every so often, she'd eye the little piece of paper that she'd reveal and push back in her pocket: (Tom – (288)-555-0153) and even that felt surreal somehow. She could not reason why she got so excited to visit a house that was set to be torn down in the first place. How could such a ridiculous story become more valid the more that she doubted it? And what was that pipe that lay beyond the shower wall? The questions preyed devilishly on her mind, and Senna closed her eyes for a long moment. Behind her eyelids, she saw cheerful faces and laughing mouths, and when she reopened her eyes, she exploded with a verbal reasoning.

"It's a dream is what it is!"

By the time she even stirred from where she laid, it was half-past midnight, and the cogs of her mind had finally worn their teeth into perfect circles. She walked over to the kitchen for a snack, and realized that, in contrast to a refrigerator full of non-perishables, a freezer with a T.V. dinner inside was the more supple option. When it was finished heating, Senna pulled it out and propped her elbows on the dining table awaiting it to cool. A dead silence rang through her house, and in the nothingness, she realized that she'd spent every night this week by herself. She looked over to the phone's off-white receiver, and, as a 'professional', she could just barely stop herself from calling anyone so late at night for a bit of sanity—even her mother. She looked beyond the lifeless spread of the valance that hung over the kitchen window to see only blackness, and she had the strangest desire to go out and blend into it all completely.

"I must be tired; I'm thinking like a crazy person."

Now lethargic, she stuck the dinner in her fridge for later and headed for her room. Senna felt her eyes grow heavy the moment her head hit the pillow, and while she slept, she dreamt. First, there was nothingness like the stark blackness of outside, but then a small, white dot grew in the middle. Time blazed past her unconscious mind unlike when she was awake—she dreamt that a minute felt like a week, and two minutes felt like a year while the white dot grew, colorfully and kaleidoscopically, into swirling shapes that became more colorful, swirling shapes. Just as the figure itself grew more and more bountiful, it consumed her first-person view until there was no darkness left; and suddenly, she saw the shape from a profile view, and it was the inside of a large, yellow-chromed pipe. It had only been fifteen minutes before she jolted awake angrily—her eyes wide and her adrenaline pumping.

"That's it! That's all I can take… 1709 Mushroom Circle…"

Senna stumbled into her work jeans and shoes over the black leggings and tank top she wore as pajamas and headed out in her coupe for that old, ruined building. The road had felt hazy to her until she realized that the bright colors in her dream had faintly impaired her vision, and by then, she had arrived at her destination. It stood eerily against the darkness of the moon, and all she had to guide her way was the small keychain light dangling on the end of her keyset.

Even with her drowsy, desensitized vision, she realized that the adrenaline rush never really left her. The setting was different from how it was in the daytime, and she felt a sort of fearlessness dive in with the sweeping breaths of her chest; even with every step that she took, she'd relish if a door would slam shut behind her, even in the doorless archways. And then, she revisited the old half-bathroom. It came upon her as if she was a predator cornering its prey, Wary to identify her target, she took a few steps forward and shone her light directly on the pipe where a single spot shone brilliantly like car rims in daylight. This time, she dared to fit herself through the opening in the wall, and her boots splashed reluctantly into the rancid ooze below her.

Brushing off her regrets, she removed the thin layer of film that had collected around the rim of the pipe. And, with much anticipation, she shone her light inside only to see what was the same substance stuffed tightly inside the diameter, and she could only assume it to be filled with more of the same sludge. Her disappointedly confused face mirrored itself in the yellow chrome.

"It's a sewage pipe… That's all it is."

Senna felt a surge of foolishness replace the adrenaline. There she stood in the festering muck in front of a septic drain, possessing herself to believe that she'd find turtles with treasure on the other side of the pipe like Alice and the White Rabbit. Humiliated with herself, she turned back and climbed up out of the crevice and back over the tub to leave. However, she only strode so far before she felt the simple sense of misguidance turn into the deep sense of feeling lost. She knew that she had been wrong, but she couldn't bring herself to go back home. The moonlight shone elegantly on her back as it rose through the cracks in the roof, and, after a moment's pause, she again faced the gaping hole in the wall.

"Well," Senna pocketed her hands as if to retain some of her escaping optimism. "I've never played in sewage before."

Strangely, the prospect of doing exactly what she just said wasn't repulsive at all, and within a moment or two, she was extra decisive about it. Even in the elusive mirage of light that blanketed the frame of destruction she'd created, the turmeric yellow of the pipe shone outstandingly in its blackened cove, and it guided her smoothly like a moth to the flame. One, two legs over into the recess, and Senna embraced the tube with pressed palms. She forced her palms directly into the pipe's blockage, and to her surprise, the thick slime only occupied a single layer over the top of what was otherwise a gust of loose garbage. Not a moment later, that little bit and more garbage shot up from the pipe in a gust of putrid air—landing all around her.

Now the path was clear. In total fascination, Senna leaned over to look straight down a now endless tunnel. As if possessed, she leaned in a little further, and when she did, she was terrified to find that the pipe began to try to engulf her at the force of a small tornado. She locked her elbows with her palms around the lip of the pipe, and her already messy braid came wildly undone. She resisted the force with all of the strength in her body, and it was in these few moments, where Senna felt herself giving into the menacing suction, that she realized that she—and her life—would never be the same again.


	2. Chapter 2

_"When one with honeyed words but evil mind__ persuades the mob, great woes befall the state." _

_― Euripides, Orestes_

**-Chapter 2-**

**B**oth Senna's build and weight were absolutely no match for the innate force that beckoned her to the other side of its tunnel—even if she would have been more than doubled at all 300 pounds of the farmer's pride, the vacuum would sweep her along with all the more inertia throughout. And through the complete darkness, all she could see with her head tilted back so far was a circular flash of bright light from the end of the pipe that grew more and more distant. It was also the last thing that she remembered before she took a turn in so many different directions that the force hurled her into a state of unconsciousness. She could not know now, but she would be the aged pipe's first delivery from San Francisco to her new destination in so, so many years.

Senna awoke after an indeterminable amount of time; she had been undisturbed since the landing—an oddly comfortable mass of ground that begged to cling to her as she sunk in it softly and peacefully. The woman pushed herself upright to save herself from the few, passively rude elements that had immediately come to her attention afterward. She made an appropriately displeased face and, upon inspection, she realized that it was frozen garbage covered in a familiar, slimy residue—all melting from beneath her. She was smack dab in the middle of an icy landfill that, in all of its pride, rose and fell repulsively across a stretch of a quarter mile.

"Well, that explains a lot…" she remarked while unhooking a plastic bag scrolled with the words _Scoopa Koopa_ from her spiral gauge earring.

She hugged herself to retain her warmth and turned her attention to the vivid, green pipe from which she came. It had forced her up out of itself instead of dropping naturally through its bowl and, baffled beyond comprehension, the occurrence almost made the legend of Santa Claus seem plausible to her. As for the cold, it turned out that she was somewhere offset in Antarctica, and it was just warm enough in its summer season to keep the bare-armed Architect from freezing to death. She found herself in the quandary of whether she should turn back to the safety of the warp pipe or to follow the unknown path of trash and, being the appreciator that she was, she took the greater pleasure in admiring an icy fortress from a distance—one that she would come upon at the litter's tail.

The fortress' drawbridge looked as if it had never been retracted. Senna had every viable reason to believe that it was a welcoming home for numb and weary expeditionists, and, despite the hardly festive décor, she had none to believe that it could be used for much any other purpose, either ethical or logical. She took a step forward and looked back; she intended on her safety, but she realized that she had come too far to go back to the pipe without some sort of reinforcement. The notion reasoned well with the split between her curiosity and her hopes of reuniting with the missing half of her sanity.

She renounced her peace on the path of slippery stones and in through the heavy, solid wood of the unlocked door, for the remnants of unsightly garbage that followed her transformed her overwhelming social anticipation into anger for the structure's general neglect. Even as a woman who was usually on the fence when it came to activism, the blatant disrespect for architecture was more than enough to persuade her to the fighting side. She tromped up short, ornate stairs and, even if she arrived for no other good reason, she intended to pick a bone with the fortress' keeper for every single, literal one that was scattered across the floor. When she arrived in the foyer, she didn't expect that the inside would be as remotely littered as it was on the outside. It was evidently warmer within, and while the stench of the garbage outside was mostly locked away in the icy snow, it manifested itself in sweating, reeking piles on the inside—especially the piles that congregated next to the radiators. Thoroughly repulsed, she couldn't help but wonder if the warp pipe she'd come from had known to grant her fair-weather wish to play in sewage.

She held her breath and powered through Le Grand Entrance where she pushed through a narrow gallery where the smell was not as foul. In the blur of her pace, she was alert enough to notice the eerie portrait frames that hung oddly low to the ground and began to suspect that the fortress was really a residence. It explained the general absence of human company within what could be a potentially splendid stronghold, but what it failed to explain was the reason for her inquiry. Who were these people? How was it even possible for a small community—let alone a household—to accumulate such a massive quantity of trash? These were just two of the enigmas within the small collection of her own that she was amassing, and she didn't intend to leave without answers. She could see the faint turn of light at the end of the corridor when one picture frame hung at her eye-level and lured for her attention. She remembered her keychain light and grabbed the device from her belt loop; and, beneath its bright white, she revealed the chiaroscuro of a turtle creature dressed sharply in a man's image.

Senna took a step back from the painting with wide eyes while the gears in her mind wore themselves painfully to their core. The turtle—strangely, a colorful beast—was depicted with light blue hair that stood straight up on the middle of his scalp with an intense pair of blue eyes that followed her as she slowly reversed from the corridor. A later, fateful step triggered the sound of heavy, wrought iron as it slammed to the ground, and she turned to hear the master in his own lair.

"I don't like that painting of me very much, either. I told him that I'm a casual kind of guy, but nooooo, I just had to wear a tuxedo!"

* * *

**"****Y** ou have got to be kidding me..." Senna murmured in her perfect entrancement.

"That's exactly what I said to him!" exclaimed the turtle, who had suddenly become passionate about his evocation. "I said—I told him, 'You gotta be kidding me! I'm not wearing that awful, fancy thing!' and then he says 'Larry, if you don't wear that tuxedo right now…!' And then he swore on Mario's grave."

Senna wasn't listening to him; all she could do was stare at _Larry_ in a speechless stupor. Unable to think in her catatonic state, this was the final abnormality in the week's events that had driven her mind to retreat from her conscious stream of thought. What thoughts she had, at least for the moment, manifested themselves in her subconscious, and she continued to make the connections there. These turtles were the part of her mother's story that she had always believed the least. It was too easy to think that her mother had mistaken crooks for just about anything subhuman in their moving blur, but to actually see that which defied the very basics of her good sense and then try to process it rationally—the disbelief had extended somewhere long beyond her. It didn't seem to extend to Larry either, and he was a little less self-centered than to ignore such a blatant, dumbfounded look.

"What's the matter, Princess? You act like you never seen a Koopa before! Oh well, fortunately for you, King Bowser will be most pleased to see you."

Unable to leave the way that she came, Senna had little choice but to inquire languidly about Larry Koopa's verbal invitation. "What? N-no, I really have to go home. I have work in the morning, and I need some _serious_ bedrest." She began to rub her eye-sockets slowly.

Larry rubbed his scaly claws together as if he was washing them. "But you'll get a lot of rest at Bowser's Castle—as long as that goody two-shoes Mario doesn't come and wreck everything again!"

"Mario, King, Princess…" She shook her head and erected her palm dismissingly, "…whatever. Thanks for your offer, but I'm done with this nonsense. I'm ready to wake up already."

"I'm afraid that it's too late to change your mind now." said Larry, an excitement still ringing in his voice. "Not only would he be happy to see you, but he'd roast ME if he knew that I let you get away so easily!"

The portentous koopa came nearer to her with his extended claws wriggling greedily, and Senna began to back up with a look of incredibility upon her face. "What?! What is this? No, I'm not going with you! Let me out of here or I'll call—", she was reminded of her setting, and she paused and huffed vulnerably, "—SOMEhow, I'll have animal services take you away!"

The agitated woman darted off to the left to escape Larry's approaching clutches, and he shook his head while he reached behind for his shell. "I see you're not going to make this easy on me." From his pack, he swiftly pulled out a wand with a red gem and, from it, hurled at her a blast of radiant energy that took the visual form of wheeling, triangular prisms. Senna's chance of reacting in time to avoid the beam was too slim, and knowing not what to expect, she was violently taken hostage by its force. She felt her muscles contract as she was hurled to the floor with her arms pulled tightly behind her.

"Damnit!" she choked in frustration—barely able to move a muscle below her neck, "Get me out of here, you crazy hallucination!"

"But we are getting out of here." Replied Larry simply. "I told you, we're going to go see King Bowser. Relax, there's nothing more comforting than his castle, but—_I think you know that by now_."

Larry reached over to an ornate, burgundy tapestry and pulled on the tassels until the fixture crashed to the floor; he acquired the rope and, with the mystical force still binding her to his will, the koopa made her captivity extra secure by tying her wrists with it. He wrapped what was left over around her waist and while she cursed him, he proceeded to lead her—like cattle—further into his dungeon.

Senna grimaced on through a cold and dark walkway that was illuminated by the irradiating force of power around her which was quickly outshined by the flaming torch that Larry had lit with his breath. She was frustrated, in disbelief, and assuredly frustrated because of the disbelief. "I don't understand! What do you want with me?! I don't have anything to give you!"

"It's not me who wants anything to do with you, Princess. It's King Bowser—"

"I'm not a Princess!" She interjected through the end of a manic and urgent breath. "And I don't want to see your damned King!"

"Not a Princess?! Are you playing dumb now?" Larry stifled a bit of hot laughter leftover from his fire breath. "Even in that disguise, I don't think that anyone will believe that you're not royalty!"

"LOOK at me!" Senna yelled in a falsetto. "Do I LOOK like royalty to you?!"

"It IS a good disguise…" Larry admitted as the two finally reached the clear and fresh daylight of the fortress balcony. Waiting for them there—disposed scenically and offset from the center—was the widest, greenest warp pipe that Senna had ever seen. It was so large that it could easily accommodate them both standing side by side in three pairs. "…but nope, not buying it!" Larry pushed her forward, and she swayed nervously at the spout until he held her steady with the rope. Joining her at the edge of sudden peril, the turtle grinned at her in delight as he bent his knees to prepare to spring into action.

"Geronimoooo!"

'No! Not another pipe! No—NO!"

Larry was already taken in mid-air, and, no matter how adamantly she protested, she was completely unable to combat the 200+ pound force of his sheer, reptilian malice. The acoustics of the pipe accentuated their echoing trail of elongated vowel sounds the further and faster they were torn through the seeming endlessness. Senna felt these brief moments flash behind her eyelids and weave themselves into the synopsis of a world that she once knew—a world of pantones and their thin fibers against the rich colors that Mother Nature conventionally reserved for herself, and it was as if all of what she had prepared for in life was merely a rite of passage, and she was transcending to the next dimension. It wasn't much longer before the duo was fired through the blustering exit, and, after an uneasy landing, they grew quiet in the flickering, hot darkness.

Larry circled the young woman to fiddle with her rope, and then he cried out suddenly. "Kiiiiiiing Bowserrrrrrrrr! I bring you goooood neeeeeeeews!"

His yodel traveled on longly through this strange, new place, and Senna attempted to focus on its echolocation. From the sound alone, all she could tell about the structure she was in was that it was made with heavy stone masonry that was founded on its massive area size that matched its elevation. Still, the assumption was enough—however large the Antarctic fortress was, this was a castle, and it was at least a few scales larger in size. When the ringing words grew distant, what they received in reply was the small quake of a low and terrifying growl, and the weighty, iron furnishings that circled her vision scraped along the grit of the stone ominously.

"Yes, he's awake!" Larry hopped from foot to foot, unable to contain his enthusiasm. "It won't be long until I'm his favorite!"

Succeeding the now pacified growl was a remote and persisting tremor that resembled the march of very heavy footsteps. Senna filled her lungs and tilted her head back to witness a blast of fire from five stories above her, and the contours of a magnificent gothic chandelier came to light with its one hundred candles now ablaze. The pulley mechanism that held the fixture in place was released, for the heavy wrought iron of the structure came plummeting down dramatically until the chain met its finite end. It teetered in its flickering distress just above the second level of the vestibule where it, with great intention, illuminated the massive gold frame that revered a portrait of the King himself.

* * *

**E**ven in her state of discontentedness, Senna couldn't help but nurture her intrigue for such a grandiose depiction of who was, without a doubt in her mind, the King of the Koopas. The King's color scheme was devilishly contrary to itself, and the burning, passionate reds of his eyes and slick pikes of hair seared like a torch against his green and scaly constitution. Just like his excitable follower, he too wore a jet black tuxedo and irradiated from within it a complete sense of self-importance—from the pure white collar that hugged the layers of his thick neck up through his augustly, yet antagonistic expression. The sheer size of the monument made it impossible for her to look upon it as a whole, and yet, it was so much so that even in the moments she managed to look away, his lively tribute was always somewhere in the corner of her eyes—most confident in their inevitable return.

Now having migrated from the east to the southern corner of the castle, the tremors of the footfalls seemed to be surrounding them slowly and carefully. Larry grabbed at Senna's shoulders and drove her ecstatically into the center of the room where drops of hot wax just barely missed toasting them both.

"Your Preposterousness, I have brought you the Princess!"

"Larry, YOU'VE brought me the Princess?" A deep, husky voice finally muttered from an echoing distance. The tone seemed full of surprise, and the ringing of its tailspin lingered with the footsteps that began to hasten to a brisk pace all around them.

"Yes, yes!" wailed Larry, who began to hop in place as if to be seen more clearly. "If you'd just hurry, you'll see her for yourself!"

The young koopa's plea was immediately heeded, for the looming presence of who was presumably King Koopa drew nearer to them as he descended his outer-laying, spiral staircase clockwise with an even greater motivation. Senna, again vexed, faced Larry and hissed at him lowly through her teeth.

"Look, I've told you before; I'm not a Princess!"

But Larry didn't hear or realize that she spoke; he was much too interested in engaging his swiftly approaching mentor who was now showering him in a wave of praise for the accomplishment.

"Larry, I must say, I've underestimated you. Tell me, did you fight Mario alone?—No, answer this instead: Is Mario DEAD?!" The simple plausibility of the question had filled his voice with so much glee that the footfalls were almost at a steady jog.

Too delighted to have made his king proud, Larry convoluted his answer to even the most straightforward question. "Yes! Yes! Wait…, no, I didn't. I didn't fight him, and he's… not dead."

The tracks stopped abruptly. "You didn't fight MARIO?! Well, how did you get the Princess, then?!" Then, the locomotion restarted, and Larry shifted his eyes—wishing that he didn't know what to say. "She just… walked right in, Your Hideousness!—"

"Ugh, don't call me that." The disgust in the tone resounded surrealistically off the residually damp walls.

"I'm sorry, uh, Your Highness! Yeah, she just—came right in, waiting for me to take her to you! I think she finally realizes that being a Koopa is the only way to live, just like you said she would!..."

Larry rambled on aimlessly as the eager gait slowed to the last turn of the staircase, and King Bowser came upon them—slowly and deliberately. From where he proceeded beyond the darkness at the crossing point, a blood red cape slugged—as if the color itself made it heavy—visibly behind him, and the flames from above danced over the grooves of his scales until he was, at last, fully bathed in its reflective, scarlet tide. Without a word, he lowered his spiked chin carefully, and Senna witnessed his eyes grow into a raging, vengeful disappointment. "…see, she dyed her hair black and she smells perfectly evil!—"

"YOU IDIOT! THAT'S NOT THE PRINCESS!" Bowser roared loudly enough to make Larry shudder twice as dramatically as his captive, whose fear was a second priority to her wide-eyed, mortal comprehension. Larry Koopa's world had too suddenly crashed in on him to avoid reverting to desperation. "But, Your Highness—!"

"You got me all excited for nothing!" Bowser turned his back and threw his arm carelessly behind him. "Why did I ever count on you to do anything right?!"

"No, King Bowser! Please! Don't leave!"

As the two argued, the fidelity of Larry's spell had begun to disintegrate. Senna shook off the dumbing incredulity and repossessed the feeling in her limbs and wrists and wished, in severe dismay, that Larry had not bound her hands so tightly. She wanted so dearly to wring his neck, but with how easily she could intercept his wand after freeing her hands, her preference held no contest. For now, her options were reserved. The King had finished berating his follower and, when he turned to the mouth of the spiral staircase, Senna breathed an appeal to him in the sudden silence.

"Your Highness…"

Bowser mounted a foot upon the step, and her plea froze him where he stood. The smooth sobriety of her voice rang deeply with her hopes, and to hear its fluid chime trail off into potential despair was as comforting to him as was a baby's lullaby. He turned his head until it reached his shoulder, and a shrewd smile formed in between the folds in his face as he approached her.

"Forgive me for being so rude. I was expecting someone else, but… I am delighted to have your company all the same, Princess."

"L-look, Your Highness…" she began, occasionally averting from his strong gaze out of uneasiness, "I'm not a Princess. My name is Senna. I'm just an Architect from San Francisco."

"Hmm… San Francisco…?" He mulled the place over in a whisper as he played with his bottom lip. Larry, now less humiliated, opportunely began again.

"Ha! The Princess of San Francisco!"

"No, you dimwit! San Francisco is a place in the United States of America." Bowser's face illuminated the moment he made the assertion. "Those warp pipes… Larry, those warp pipes are still active!"

Larry and Senna voiced themselves at the same time, and, in her desperation for answers, she made sure to be the overpowering force. "I came through a chrome, yellow warp pipe! What WAS it doing there?!"

"Oh yeah!" Larry exclaimed, "That's when you were melting the ice caps with thousands of hair dryers, and you had to steal artifacts just to pay for them all!"

Senna's eyes grew wide. "Wait-what?!"

"Don't remind me, Larry." Bowser shifted his eyes shamefully. "Princess, the warp pipe that you fell through was part of a plan that I had to take over your world more than a decade ago. I had them installed throughout the world and I _thought_ that I had them all completely destroyed—" His eyes narrowed sourly at Larry.

"You—you went to Rio, didn't you?!" After the inflection in her voice, she had begun to shiver with an irrational anticipation.

"Yes, we did go to Rio, actually." Bowser confirmed. "What artifacts _did_ we take from them, Larry?"

"Wait, wait! Oh, I remember this!" Larry's attempt at deep thought almost seemed to cause him pain. "Oh I remember! We stole a seashell off of Koopacabana beach!"

"Copacabana beach…" Senna muttered correctly.

"A seashell?!" Bowser hollered in disbelief. "Couldn't you incompetents do any better than stealing seashells from a beach?! It's no wonder our plan failed!"

"But the beach was so nice, Your Highness!" cried Larry, "And the sand was so soft and warm, and… I'm so sick and tired of living in Antarctica! Why can't you let me stay in a castle that's not freezing, like the others?!"

"Because, you've already made it yours by making it a filthy pigsty! You've never thrown anything out in your life! You're saying that I should give you another one of my abandoned castles so you can do the same thing to it? That'll never happen!"

Both koopas diverged again from the topic into their primary interest, and Senna—caught in the middle and off-center from the two—battled her sheer disbelief as well as the many answers that just seemed to satiate but further complicate her many questions. Even among the warp pipes, trash castles and evil turtles, the most difficult reality to grasp was that her mother had been right about everything—and getting back to San Francisco to tell her so was the next. She wriggled her wrists together more vigorously to gradually loosen the rope's knot, and, after a few moments of flexible planning in her scheme to warp back to Antarctica, she could finally slip through the loosened knot.

Senna acted out her plan quickly and impulsively; with Larry's back facing her, the entirety of her body hid behind his bigger frame as she shuffled behind him, took one deep breath, and snatched the wand out from his right hand.

"Hey!" Larry took a step forward and readied his arm to swipe at her.

"Don't move!" She aimed the wand in her own right hand out directly at the two as she withdrew in short, swift strides. "The first one who takes one more step forward gets a face full of magic; you got me?!"

However, King Koopa was very unfazed by her threat. He pushed his loyal sycophant aside and began to march steadily towards her—extending a large, dreadful claw much like an ultimatum.

"Give the scepter to me! Give it to me now!"

Without a second thought, Senna drew her arm back and threw it back into its locked position as if to cast a spell onto him, but, much to his knowledge and little to her own, the wand didn't raise a spark for her. She tried again to no avail, and King Bowser shook his head and treaded on heavily. She clung onto the wand as if it was her life support and constrained a fit of hyperventilation as she retreated into the last half of her plan.

The rope that she gripped fiercely with her left hand was her only means of escape; she fashioned a very poor lasso from Larry's knot with the intention of fastening the loop around the raised lip of the ceiling pipe that she had fallen through. But, before Senna could even realize that she had no idea how to manage the feat, Larry had too suddenly cut in front of Bowser to run forth to tackle her. She focused her attention instead on delivering a highly improvised kick to his surprisingly soft stomach.

After the anticlimax, the koopa keeled over vibrantly. "Nnnnnnnng! I didn't think that a girl could hit back!"

Bowser groaned and continued as he brushed Larry from his path with a foot. More alarmed with every moment, Senna desperately threw the rope up to the shadowy ceiling—ecstatic to find that it had finally caught on a koopa statue after the second heave. Then, with her very first enthusiastic remembrance of gym class ever, she began to climb the elegant chains in the tapestry rope to escape the scaly tyrant. Senna's heart raced in her throat and her guts churned like kneaded dough—if only she could jump onto that pipe and get sucked into it! She strove for enough fait to act, but she had looked down too soon first to see that Bowser had already lit the end of the rope on fire—and the flames were racing up to meet her.

A shriek had stolen her breath, and, in that moment, she had felt more intense than she had ever previously in her entire life. The combined trauma from all of the elements had finally become too incredible for her, and she fought the haze of the rising smoke until she had finally lost her nerve. Her focus blurred from her sharply distorted image in the pipe's reflection, and the last of what she saw was the dance of steaming embers before she released the rope—plummeting unconsciously into the King's awaiting grasp.

There was a long pause, and the sounds of snapping fire lingered solemnly throughout the room. Larry, who nursed his stomach overindulgently, broke what was otherwise silence with a wheezy conclusion. "See… I told you that I brought you a Princess."

"She's not a Princess, numbskull." Bowser remarked sternly, "But, we can make her one, and that's what matters."

* * *

**S**enna awoke to find herself laying flat on an uncomfortable, raised stack of dried grass. She sat up and rubbed the reddish prints that the weight of her sleep had had embossed upon her and she wondered where she had been displaced this time; not knowing how long she had been unconscious for was really beginning to annoy her. However, it didn't take the woman long to figure out that she was trapped in a dungeon cell—complete with the tell-tale, shadowy bars of light that stroked the ground affectionately each time a torch bearer passed through the narrow walkway.

Her layer-thin patience with the situation was briefly muted while she observed each as he patrolled cheerlessly passed the chamber. They weren't just turtles; some took the forms of creatures that she couldn't compare to any of the millions of species that existed in her world. A small, brown mushroom-like creature with overgrown cuspids was without arms and was forced to balance his leading lantern on top of his singular body; another creature that resembled a large cherry bomb followed his path in a frantic zig-zag motion, and the mid-sized, yellow turtle that followed both in line lowered his torch unwittingly and lit the bomb's fuse. The bomb raced manically ahead of the steady train, and the explosion that followed caused the dungeon to rumble with dusty rock debris scattering like mist across the floor. They were ruthless, yet intriguing little fiends in this remarkable new world, and Senna had finally come to terms with the very basics of its surreal nature; she expected that this was just the first of the many different kinds that she would encounter trying to liberate herself from her captivity. If only the bomb could have detonated closer to her cell wall…

The bomb blast alerted a different animate wall—one complete with eyes and fiercely arched brows—that initiated an angry descent to crush the remaining troop, and its miss spared the duo by no more than a foot of space in between them. Even from a distance, the commotion beckoned the King's attention, and the deep bass from his diaphragm rolled up and along the walls in a thundering clamor. The alarmed troops raced around a corner, the vengeful stone block reassumed its position, and all was in order to leave Senna to deal with the congeniality of His Majesty's wrath.

Bowser met his last step off and he carried with him, in addition to a look of satisfaction, what looked like a stout table leg that was engulfed in bright orange flames that tickled the stone overhead. The broadness of his free hand clenched upon three bars at a time.

"You're making such a racket down here. I hope that you can keep it up."

Senna squinted and shielded her eyes with her palm from the fire's intensity. "Nice sarcasm."

"Oh, it's not sarcasm, my dear captive. I really hope that you do. You see, someone's on his way to come rescue you as we speak, and I want him to know exactly where you are."

Hosting an expression that was a mix between shock and revulsion, Senna dropped her hands to her sides and sounded off curtly. "All right, I need some answers from you—right now! What kind of twisted game is this, and what kind of twisted ruler are you?! What is this place—what is this whole –bad acid trip of a world?! And why the hell are you keeping me here if I'm not the person you wanted to see anyway?!—"

"Hey! One question at a time! I don't have a lot of attention to expend on people without my kind of gross, fiscal power." King Koopa fixed his torch on the wall behind him and began to pace at his most comfortable leisure. "You're so clueless—maybe you should sleep for another two days."

"What…? I was out for two days?!"

"Eh, about one and a half days earth time—two in this world. This is the Mushroom World, and I'm its dominant overlord." He continued. "Everyone everywhere on this planet has recognized my authority—all except for one, a Mushroom Kingdom that will be under my rule just as soon as _he_ arrives..."

"And _he_ being—?"

"His name is Mario." he interrupted, grimacing in the bad taste that had formed inside of his mouth. "He's a constant nuisance and your knight in shining armor. Although, I wouldn't expect him if I were you; by the time he gets here, his blood will be spilling down my castle stairs. You're just the bait I'm using to bring him here. He can't resist saving a damsel in distress, especially if he believes she's a Princess."

"So, let me get this straight; you're so desperate to kill Mario that you'd snatch the first woman you see, slap a Princess label on her, use her as damsel bait to get his attention, then crush him before he takes her back to his kingdom?"

"Desperate is a filthy word more suited for your predicament." Bowser blurted. "Mario's priority is to defend the Mushroom Kingdom, but if he's distracted trying to save you, I can take over the Princess's kingdom easily. The hardest part is deciding if I want to stay to see him squashed first or to see the Princess finally bow to me."

"Why don't you just go there, squash him THERE, and THEN make her bow to you?"

"So I can let you escape?" There was a spasm of amusement in his chest. "I kidnapped you out of convenience; you just happened to be at the right place at the right time, so you're a pawn in a very spontaneous plan—don't think that you're not disposable. If Mario comes to me, I cut my effort in half, and I love the thought of coming home to a cowering Princess who knows that she's doomed without a hero to save her."

"That's so… chivalrous." Senna said cynically, stretching the corners of her mouth across the width of her face.

"I'm glad that you're so keen on this." Bowser replied, then with a bit more jest; "Your insight on the situation has been absolutely invaluable. Fortunately for us, Mario should be here any moment now. … I'd hate to leave you so soon, 'princess', but I know some little devils who will keep you in good company." He turned to the ascending staircase and inhaled deeply before bellowing out the names of three of his Koopalings. "LARRY! IGGY! MORTON! Get down here RIGHT NOW!"

A faint chattering from above gradually grew louder with accompanying footsteps as a group of three turtles—one familiar to her and two new ones—gathered around their King and saluted him boorishly. Iggy, a demented looking koopa appearing to have a palm tree-like stalk sprouting from his head, broke out into a hysterical, speaking laughter. "Reporting for duty, Your Rah-ha-haha-haoyal Koopaness!"

"Good work," Bowser congratulated, "I don't always expect you amateurs to get this far. I want you three to focus on providing our princess stunt-double here the highest level of hospitality that you can manage while I make the final arrangements for Mario's demise. Think you can handle that?"

Morton, who bore more of a resemblance between a koopa and a rock than just a koopa, grabbed Iggy and Larry by the necks of their shells and spoke out in his raspy, grating voice. "Yeah, I know that I got it, and I'll make sure that these other two _get it_ if they just don't _get it_."

"So noble of you to take responsibility, Morton, because if anything goes wrong, I'll make sure that YOU'RE one that I blame!" The King turned his back to the four to leave them in harmony, turning back to Senna once more if only just to feel his cape swish importantly behind him. "Oh, and… Welcome to the Mushroom World, my pet. I hope that you enjoy your nice, long stay."

"Hey! No! Get back here! I'm not staying in here! I am NOT staying in this Mushroom hell!" Senna cried out, shaking the cell bars violently, but Bowser had since stopped listening and proceeded to his front-stage spectacular. The woman shoved herself away from the bars indignantly and pushed a curse through her tight teeth. "…jerk-off!"

"He's only doing what's best for you, you know!" cheered Larry suddenly, "He does what's best for everyone!"

She replied irately. "What do you know?! You're hopelessly brainwashed!"

"I know! It gives such a wonderful meaning to my life!"

As the koopa exalted his race, Senna's contemptuous snarl waned from rage to agitated disgust as she isolated herself on the left wall of the room. "Ugh… Don't talk to me."

No less merry, Larry turned to his two brothers to find that they were firmly engaged in an argument—and to a koopa, it was the apex of familial love. Morton, who was well aware that he had more mass than Iggy, was not only unafraid to push his brother around but also took great pleasure in doing so.

"I'm the boss of you because I get to be! King Bowser put me in charge—you gonna argue against authority?!"

Iggy pushed Morton back; he enjoyed delivering emotional abuse just as much as his younger brother did, and he guffawed menacingly. "Why would I waste my time arguing with a bunch of incapable idiots when I can just challenge them instead?!"

"You just wait until I tell King Bowser that you think he's an incapable idiot!" Their violence seemed systematically turn-based; Morton shoved Iggy against a wall and pinned him there. "Now, if you want me to forget that you ever said that, you'll cater to my every whim for a week!"

"Koopas take orders from no one!" Iggy shouted ironically, shoving his knee into Morton's side to break free from his oppression. "Besides, I never said that, and he won't believe you, anyway! I've been more of a help to the King than you've ever been in your whole life!"

"Now you're just being pompous!"

Larry, now very excited about their destructive row, chimed in with a point that he found critically valid. "Neither of you had been more help to Bowser than I have! I'm the one who brought him the girl, and he's veeeeeeeery proud of me!"

"Then why did he put ME in charge and not you, you blue-headed bird-brain?" Morton scoffed. "He just lets you stay with the elite crew because he feels BAD for you!"

Iggy followed in with another laughing fit and nearly choked on his saliva. "I'd feel bad for him, too, but it's—that's just too funny!"

"You know who I'm gonna feel bad for when I'm through with both of you?!" Larry screeched, "BOTH OF YOU!"

The shouting among the three hooligans had long gotten on Senna's nerves, and she slid down to the filthy floor and rubbed her temples to alleviate the pressure that was building behind them. The fine particles that littered the air from their roughhousing and the aging stench that settled inside of her jeans had both made it hard to breathe in such an enclosed space. And through the complete chaos, the aggravated prisoner had a moment of clarity after witnessing Iggy throw Larry against the feeble, iron bars of the containment. This part of the castle, secluded in a remote location of the massive stronghold, was so neglected, old, or both, that it was falling apart without much effort needed to destroy it. The force of Larry's blow onto the caging had knocked out a rusted, brittle bar, and Senna took it in her hands and disappeared into the darkest corner of the cell.

Looking on to the softest light that nested within the rugged texture of the stone, the architect was immediately reminded of her experience of the bathroom in San Francisco. Now the lesson of the 1709 house on Mushroom Circle made plenty of sense! She acted like a stethoscope and pressed an ear to the back corner of the stone wall only to learn quickly that it was a rather bad idea with the boys still pounding bricks and shaking the structure on the opposite side. Her newly acquired crowbar, however, would fetch a better trick; coupled with another traumatic hit to the stone wall, Senna had discovered a row of blocks that slid easily out of place.

Ecstatic, she beat them in to find that the wall, while not as hollow as the bathroom tile, was rather thin for a prison cell, and had emptied out to a remote hallway! She couldn't complain in the least—not about the uneven wedge, the debris that dusted her eyelashes, or even that the stones pulled at her hair as she squeezed herself silently through the gap like a summer sausage. She was out, and, with crowbar in hand, she breathed a deep sigh of relief as she faced an oppressed, square window that revealed the murky, grayish vermillion of freedom.

* * *

**H**er priority now was to follow the natural outdoor light wherever it had bent from within the large obstruction. Senna rushed through the perpendicular hallways that, whether it was intended in its design or not, seemed as endless as a frustrating labyrinth. She guided herself swiftly forward, only knowing that a lighter glow than the sanguine essence of flames had made itself a mural on a stretch of wall in the distance. She hastened her pace to a brisk walk when she felt a central fire begin to warm the strip of her back, and that walk became a jog when she looked over her shoulder to find that even the florets of fire on the walls had come alive to deter her.

"Are you kidding me?! Even the architecture wants me dead?!"

She summoned from within her a rush of energy to morph her jog into a careless sprint. The closer that she drew to the lighter wall, the more clearly she could see her hurried shadow grow over it. However, it began to fade with the speed that she picked up and the flames had begun to ebb. Sparing no time to look over her shoulder, she careened to her right down a spiraling staircase, and the gust that surged through a twisting gallery of oblong, half-circle windows had been deterrent enough for the blazing foes. Although she was alone, she kept her hurried pace—she was resolute in not spending one more minute inside of the crazy castle. She hated to admit it, but anywhere, even if it was further away from home, was better than staying a prisoner here or becoming fire fodder. She ran on until she caught her breath and her balance at one of the substantial openings.

Through it, Senna took a moment to assess the outside area and was sad to find that she was still too high up to survive from a drop down. She was relieved to find that she wasn't far now from the front of the castle, although with how polluted it was with all kinds of small creatures that she could only assume were waiting for Mario, she would dare not escape that way. She bit her bottom lip and lingered for a moment until she saw a sea of red-robed, wobbling specs with white faces in the distance. Upon further observation, and much to her delight, they were marching in a wavy line away from what was a relatively unmanned drawbridge off to the right. She decided that that was her plan; the eager woman stormed down the landings with the location in her mind until she was surprised to bump into one of the little red guys themselves. The smaller creature just about reached the height of her knee-caps, and in her progression she, regrettably, sent him tumbling backwards down the last half of his stair flight.

Senna winced reactively at the sight as she hurried to his side. Unsure of whether or not to help him, she bent over him to find the wide-eyed blank stare of a white mask staring back at her. The surrounding silence was followed by his sudden, frantic chirping as he hopped to his feet and continued in his direction by running and flailing his stumpy arms frantically. Senna cocked a brow at the unusual behavior and, just moments after, turned the corner to find that a stampede of the same, little men hauled themselves upstairs in the same chirping terror—fearing for their lives.

Senna pressed her back to the wall to let them pass. "What in the Sam Hill is going on?!"

Another look out a window told her everything. A taller figure in red and blue—clearly a human—plowed through the squeaking trail of critters smoothly as if they were bowling pins, and he was the bowling ball. Even at the distance, she could hear his cheerful interjections as he vaulted upon them in an impressive display of acrobatics.

"That must be Mario… HEY, MARIO!"

She called out to the man, but he hadn't heard her, and had too suddenly disappeared from her field of vision to find out where he had gone. Determined to find him, she forced herself against the mainstream of red robes until the steady panic of the creatures had finally reached its end—that's when she had stopped and heard the calamity from who were Larry, Iggy, and Morton together and conspiring against one another from a higher level.

"—Well, you were the one who threw the bob-omb at the cell block, Morton! What's the matter? Can'tcha take some responsibility for your actions? You told the King that you would!" exclaimed Larry in a jeering tone.

"Don't you dare try to pin this on me! I threw the bob-omb, but you caught it and held onto it! You wanted King Bowser to give you more responsibility, so YOU take responsibility for what happened!"

"Never! I've worked too hard to get this far with him—I've done such a good job! With me, it was an accident, but YOU did it on purpose."

"Yeah, you did a GREAT job of letting the same girl that you captured escape!" Iggy intervened.

"Oh, great… not _them _again!" Senna lamented on her continuous descent. She tilted her head back as far as it could go to discover that they were accompanied by the little red guy that had passed her earlier, who, still frenzied, exchanged his chirps with Morton and leaned over the stair rail to point her out below.

"A-ha!" Morton roared, "There she is, guys! Get her, or we'll ALL be in major trouble!"

Senna gritted her teeth. "Little snitch!" Regretting that she had ever stopped once on her route to escape, she began to leap down multiple steps in her desperation to reach the bottom. She was most glad that it wasn't long until she laid eyes on that radiant, flat landing, and she sprinted out through the drawbridge onto the grounds. Once there, she was dismayed to find that the once busy area was completely heroless, but she couldn't wait for him—especially not now that the three koopalings had resorted to dropping themselves out of the stairway's windows to catch up to her.

"We got her now, boys!" Morton gloated as he recovered himself from a painless fall. "If you think you're getting away, girl, you've got another thing comin'!"

Unwilling to find out what would happen if she told him off, Senna made a break for the front of the castle only to make a hasty retreat in spite of another army of shy, robed adversaries who had gathered there—all of who were better equipped with shields and small, but sharp-looking swords. In a twittering fury, their brigade of about 30 or 40 began their forward charge, and Senna dashed madly to the back of the castle to avoid both approaching parties.

She was unable to think as she pushed her body to its limit to evade the heated chase of cold-blooded bodies and the shots of prism-shaped magic beams that soared past her from behind. Nothing but the surge of adrenaline and the will to survive pervaded her focused mind as she juked around the objects which obstructed her path, such as pillars and stationary equipment. Suddenly, she went head-to-head with a tenacious bob-omb—the same kind of cherry bomb from earlier—and heaved it behind her the moment it lanced into and ignited in her arms. The explosion only sent the infantry of robed creatures flying as the reptilian trio battered on like tanks, but she was satisfied with gaining even the most miniscule amount of time for when she came upon a long, rectangular airstrip.

Iggy, the closest to catching up with Senna, called out in an unprecedented, fanatical outcry. "Stop her! She's going for the Clown ship!"

"Clown ship?!" Not a moment after he tipped her off, Senna advanced rapidly towards the ugliest mode of transportation that she had ever laid her eyes on—a bowl-shaped aircraft with the face of an orange-lipped clown painted ostentatiously on the side. Without a second thought, the determined woman grabbed at the edge and swung her feet into the aircraft when she, just having missed safety by less than a second, was accompanied by Iggy and Larry's determination as they too became passengers on what was to be an unexpectedly turbulent ride.

In her thoughtless haste, she took a leap of faith by pressing a giant, red button that was located right in the middle of the cockpit. The clown's eyes lit up like a flame, and the result sent the aircraft shooting straight up into the air soon enough to avoid Morton's magic zap. Larry Koopa gripped onto the spinning propeller below, and Iggy climbed directly into the aircraft with her. Now facing the green-spiked koopa one on one, Senna shrieked as Iggy lunged towards her with ill-fatedly open arms. "Stop moving! You'll make it harder on yourself the more you resist!"

Indeed, in a small aircraft just marginally intended to accommodate two, he successfully put the woman in an arm-lock on his second try. Larry, on the other hand, was an unwelcome third, and was wrenching the vehicle into an unbalanced rift while the propeller blade spun faster. The inertia was so intense that the Clown ship had dramatically tilted to its side and Larry's grip slipped to the very edge of the now straining blade.

"Larry, you idiot! Let go of the propeller or we'll all crash!"

"No! I captured her first, and I'm going to be the one who captures her again!"

"Larry, are you insaaaaaaane!?"

The stalling craft had begun to tear the trio down with it, and the capture crew waiting below started to look less and less like spots littered over the barren, ashen soil. Iggy still clung to Senna, who realized that, with the tightening of his grip, he wasn't trying to save himself as much as he was content on dragging her down with him. In the urgency of the moment, she had made the impetuous decision to grab at the shift stick and shift it upwards—one of which caused the aircraft to buck violently forward. Senna's body barely caught the edge of the dashboard as it knocked her back into the console; and when Iggy's grip loosened and Larry flung forward from overhead, she became the crouching witness of a swinging tier of Larry clinging onto Iggy. The latter clawed for stability on the outer edge of the ship's bowl.

"LARRY! LET ME GO!"

"I can't quit now! I'm almost there!"

And, at last, Senna jerked the lever forward once more which sent both koopa brothers hurling into the airy abyss. She breathed a heavy, manic sigh and spoke her peace just a moment too late.

"There…. how about you BOTH let go…"

The brothers, who had retreated into their shells to prepare for maximum impact, had made their landing somewhere short of the battalion below—leaving deep, punishing craters where they had collided with the ground. With the shy, robed soldiers huddled around him, Larry emerged from his shell first in complete disorientation. The sea of red cloth parted for Iggy, who delivered a backhand smack that made Larry's head spin even more.

"I told you to let go, but nooooo! You just had to try to be the hero!"

"You both are gonna have to do a lot of kissing up to King Bowser now that BOTH of you let the girl go!" scolded Morton, who turned his mystical mallet up to the sky to bring a drifting Senna to their attention. With great disdain, they watched as the novitiate pilot, their now former captive, soared off into the atmosphere.

He continued. "One of you is going to have to tell King Bowser, and it's not gonna be me."

It was around this time that King Bowser and the legendary Mario were mere seconds from crossing paths once more. The Italian hero had tread his sentiments through the periphery of the castle's grounds—where the aching remains of Bowser's troops lay scattered and writhing—and had now reached the core of the grand Cathedral to the turtle's throne. Truly, none of these inconveniences were expenditures for the evil King, for he often arranged for his troops to falter as to later construct an even grander performance in vowing to avenge them. There, he lingered beyond the deepest shadow of his throne in his dedicated stasis—awaiting the very right moment to step out from them to reveal that he was again reborn in the sanction of malevolence. It was always in this particular moment that both his imagination of Mario's well-hidden fear, and his own, personal foresight into the press that would surround his imminent victory had a wonderful way of making his innards twist and his blood pressure rise in indescribable ecstasy.

Bowser decided that the moment had come, and he bent his elbows and raised his palms to his sides as if he had formed a holy trinity. Mario, full of his presiding energy, took his stance.

"Welcome, Mario. I've been expecting you." His grin widened, and he kept on. "Right behind me in my dungeon is the Princess that you're looking for, but don't worry about keeping her waiting; I've reassured her that you'll be the late Mario by the time that you reach her."

Mario squinted his eyes and reassumed his position as a fighter; he was unwilling to humor any more of Bowser's self-indulgent banter when, conveniently for him, Bowser had fallen silent to concentrate on the pathetic blubbering that escalated from outside. The King turned his head to peer out through the archway to his balcony to see a cluster of reds in a circle on the court and the unmistakable sights and sounds of Larry wailing at his escapee in the distance. Bowser closed his eyes and reiterated an expletive through his teeth that he used as a mantra—his jaw so forcibly clenched that it may break under the pressure.

" Ohh, and one more thing… Your princess is in another castle. It's too bad for you that I never had a princess here in the first place."

None of the koopa's latest words were a lie, but an incensed Mario was willing to look past the context and right to the villainous reptile who he believed had led him on a heinous journey just for his sheer amusement. Without further ado, the first punch was thrown, and, with a blow right above the jaw, Bowser hadn't recalled the plumber's swing ever having a more decent hook. But the admiration for his opponent could stand to wait; Bowser countered another of Mario's deliveries with a hefty claw swipe which knocked a smaller and lighter Mario off of his feet and onto the stone cut below.

Bowser summoned a blast of fire from his gut and hurled it at the recovering Mario, who waved at his pant leg to exterminate the flame that had sprouted. To better fight fire with fire, the hero had pulled a flower from his reserves that, in the moment he made contact with its fiery petals, seemed to bestow upon him its arcane fire properties. Bowser laughed at Mario's attempts to burn his feet with the small kindles of flames that he projected in between his gait and took another strong slash at his adversary. However, the moustached man easily outran the giant reptile, and was quite skilled at getting him to try to keep up with the circles that he was running around him. Irritated with the tomfoolery, Bowser stopped and held out his leg to either block or trip the plumber, but his cleverness was countered well in advance when Mario, instead, leaped over the leg and head-butted Bowser into the larger flame that all of Mario's smaller flames had slowly evolved into.

With a toasty dorsum, Mario found it tricky to wait for the correct time to snatch at Bowser's tail without scorching his hands in the process. Mario had acted too soon, and, with consequence, his fire ability had exhausted itself. He was again a man without the aid of the element, and with Bowser's tail in his possession, its feverishness transformed his gloved hands into oven mitts. Mario had relinquished the momentum of his elliptical swing, and Bowser went flying into a colossal, blazing thurible that was poorly secured on the vaulted ceiling. As he crashed to the floor, it also crashed upon him, and the service was completed.

The King, too in pain to challenge his archrival to another round, had no choice but to witness Mario traverse to the back of the castle from whence he came. Rewarded by none but their cavalier spar, the victor tipped his hat and shook his head before he disappeared around the bend of the doorway. Alone, the defeated monarch brushed the heavy, metal decoration from his torso and spent a few more moments spread supinely beneath his filthy cape and reviled Mario's name from the driest corner of his mouth. Moments later, a peak of vivid, blue spikes peeked out from the corner of the battered archway; and then, a claw…

"Your… Your Imperviousness…?"

Bowser had lain motionlessly and refused to acknowledge Larry and his usual, painfully awkward context. The koopaling shuffled in and stared so blankly at his King it was almost as if he believed Bowser was dead. Even in its ridiculousness, the notion still gave him a substantial boost of courage to approach him more closely.

"King Bowser… " Larry trailed off. "Are you okay, Your Royal Rottenness?"

Bowser, unable to hide his disdain for such a stupid question, finally expressed himself with a crooked smile of sarcastic impatience. "Look, If I'm not okay, then you, Iggy, and Morton are all gonna get it."

"You don't look like you're okay…"

Bowser blew in two puffs of raspy laughter, and then inhaled. "I'm not."

"Ohhhhh…" Larry's consonant had followed his trail of breath for so long that it transformed into the next sentence. "Well… uh… Morton says that I have some news to bring you… "

Bowser shifted his shoulders sorely just to be comfortably able to shoot a glare at the timid messenger.

"Ahh.. ye-about… the… y'know… "

"What are you going to tell me that I don't know, Larry? Go ahead, what is it…?"

"The… girl, well… uhhhhhhh... she…" He jerked his head off to the side and stalled in an unintentional stammer. Again, he wished that he didn't know what to say. "… she… she… is… going to borrow your Clown ship for a little while."

King Bowser gargled on a sigh as his head rocked back into its spiny position. When his eyes reached the ornate ceiling, he made a confession. "Larry… There's never a moment that I can't tell you how much I admire your flawless efforts in making me absolutely miserable."

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**L**ike the gentle caress of fingertips on a harp, the mysticism of grace and good fortune had ushered Senna miles from the coast of Bowser's territory in a weightless drift. The meek thrust of her engine served only to keep her buoyant among the temperate breaths of wind that swept her along at its will. She knew not where she was headed as she became the silent witness to the guiding gusts—and she was levered to the placidity of its crests and cradled lowly back over the sea in a wistful respire.

Through the mirror in the dark, opaque luster below, the perpetual dusk of a thunderous, indigo sky shifted congruously for the wake of the crisp, teal clarity of twilight. A lightless mist from the fighting current grew in collective droplets beneath the half moons of her gaze, and, with dry eyes open, every unsaid word built in her chest as she spread her arms to split the horizon with the increasing speed of the aircraft.

With only the fullness of a quickly depleting fuel tank, she soared forward with the wonderful feeling of a sunken heart –one that sunk only for if another warp pipe may exist somewhere deep within the tragic beauty of the strange, new frontier…

**~End of Chapter 2~**

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**_((Hello, there! I hope you're enjoying my tale of _****_After the Fall!_****_ ( Fanfic net's simple text formatting makes me a sad panda...)_**

**_Chapter 3 is already one-forth written, and once I put a wrap-up on my piano classes, I will have much more time to really put my heart and soul into this. Things have just begun, and Chapter 3 will really start to bring the story together. Stay tuned for more story (and illustrations!) in the next, riveting chapter of After the Fall!))_**


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